


In the Shadow of Scheherazade

by RageSeptember



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Broken People Occasionally Making It Work, F/M, M/M, Multi, Occasional fluff, Polyamory, Ship all the ships, Suicide, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-01-02 09:38:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 6,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1055258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RageSeptember/pseuds/RageSeptember
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock drabbles, mostly about Jim Moriarty. Some are short, some are very, very short. </p><p>See chapter titles for pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mormor

Sebastian says ”fuck you, boss” and Jim drawls ”you wish, Moran” and that is that, for a great many months. 

Sebastian starts smoking again.

It is almost one year after their first fateful meeting, and Sebastian has killed sixty-seven people for Jim. Some of them were important, some of them random casualties, and he doesn’t care either way. “Sixty-seven,” Jim muses out loud, wine glass in hand and a distant look in his ever-changing eyes. “This calls for a celebration.” “What sort of number is sixty-seven?” Sebastian demands, and Jim shrugs: “The right kind.”

They have champagne and a smelly Saint Agur that doesn’t go with the champagne, and strawberries and crackers and cheese doodles. They don’t fuck that night, but they both realize that they are going to, probably very soon.

Sebastian finds a key to Jim’s flat in his pocket, and he never asks how it ended up there.

When they do fuck for the first time it is raining, and the sound of water drops hard against the window almost drowns out Sebastian’s muffled curses as Jim’s teeth dig into the sniper’s neck. Jim is quiet and closed off and when he comes he punches Sebastian in the face. 

A year passes, and they know each other’s bodies as intimately as a journeyman knows the way back home. Jim still punches the sniper ever so often, but he makes noises now, too, little gasps and groans as he wraps his arms and legs around the sniper and shudders and shivers and writhes.

Sometimes Jim disappears, for days and weeks at end. Several times Sebastian gives him up for dead, but in the end the little psycho always returns. “Oh, honey, darling, sweetling, you didn’t miss me, did you?” Then the little psycho demands to be fucked, and everything else fades.

It doesn’t make any sense, but little of what Jim does make any sense. Sebastian has gotten used to it, the way you get used to a strange smell or the way a lost limb throbs. 

Sebastian knows he will miss it, when the smell eventually and truly fades, and the limb finds its peace.


	2. Mormor

Jim is forever somebody else.

He wakes up with scars on his knuckles and a grin to slash your body in half. He turns from his computer screen and the smile on his face is that of a lamb, of a saint, of a little girl on her way to visit her grandma.

He puts on a tee and talks with a stutter.

“Come back to me,” you say.

He switches suits and switches smiles and is somebody else.


	3. Mormor

“I hate the world today,” says Jim.

“You hate the world every day,” says you,

He leaves you bleeding, and you forget to pick up your laundry.

It is Thursday and neither of you can be bothered to get out of bed. “Order Indian,” says Jim and you fuck him senseless against the headboards.

It is Saturday and you miss him.

“Miss me?” he asks. (It is Tuesday.)

“Didn’t notice you were gone.” You drop your cigarette butt and life starts again.


	4. Jim (implied Mormor)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are looking for Sheriarty rather than MorMor, head for chapter 12.

This, then, is the truth about Jim Moriarty: he was a sick man in a slick suit. Oh, that suit and that smile and that oh-dear-me-I-couldn’t-possibly-care-less-if-I-live-or-die expression on his face made everyone – from drug dealer to corrupt politician – shiver in fear, but the fragile heart (he did have one, you know; everyone does) underneath was forever empty and aching and bloody breaking with the desire to belong and be whole.

He was not a sadist. He just didn’t care enough to care for your pain. Sorry.

His name meant nothing. He could have been Dylan Brown or Jacob Barker or John bloody Smith and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The name did not make him; he made the name.

If he did love, he never told anyone. Some will take their secrets to their graves. Jim did, and there are those who will never forgive him for it.

He dreamt of tigers once, and whimpered in his sleep. When woken and asked he said he couldn’t remember.

His eyes were black, and brown, and golden. It is all a matter of perspective.

He didn’t count the bodies. Only two of them ever mattered to him, and one of them was a lie, and the other one his own.


	5. Mormor (Afterwards, when a lover kills himself)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Afterwards everything is too late.
> 
> A MorMor paraphrase of the last two paragraphs of Stig Dagerman's short story To Kill A Child.
> 
> This was originally archived here as its own story, but it's really more of a drabble, so I moved it.

Afterwards everything is too late. Afterwards a tall man climbs up on a deserted roof (while below another man staggers toward his fallen friend and that man makes all the panicked, desperate noises the man on the roof can’t). Afterwards a tall man forces himself to walk over the roof on steady feet even though there is a void growing inside of him. Afterwards there is a cell phone carelessly dropped near the blood and brain substance splattered on the roof and a pale man is lying there with his unseeing eyes turned towards the sky. Afterwards the tall man kneels down next to his lover and his hand is shaking like it has never shook while pressing down a trigger as he reaches out to close his lover’s eyes. Because it isn’t true that time heals all wounds. Time doesn’t heal a dead lover’s wounds, and it doesn’t heal a detective’s cracked skull, and least of all does it heal the despair of a tall, once happy, man who didn’t question his lover’s orders and who stayed on his post even when his lover left him with a strange glint in his eyes and without a kiss goodbye and didn’t answer his phone.

Afterwards the one whose lover has killed himself doesn’t run to the edge of the roof to fire his vengeance down on those still gathered below and fulfill his lover’s last order by killing a retired army doctor. He gathers his lover’s still almost warm body unto himself and he carries it down the roof and he calls his lover’s people to make sure no evidence of his lover’s death will ever be found. A car takes him far, far out of London to bury the body and nowhere does he see one smiling person. All the shadows are very dark and when the tall man eventually returns to the flat he shared with his lover he has not spoken in two days and he knows that this silence is his enemy and that he will need the rest of his life to vanquish it by yelling that it wasn’t his fault, it was all that detective, his lover didn’t plan this, the tall man couldn’t have stopped it. But he knows it is a lie, and in his nights’ dreams he will instead wish for one single minute of his life back to make that one minute different. But so cruelly is life created for the one whose lover kills himself that everything afterwards is too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned in the summary this drabble isn’t so much inspired by Stig Dagerman’s short story To Kill a Child (read an English transaltion at http://www.grandstreet.com/gsissues/gs42/gs42b.html - note that I’ve not used this translation, but rather translated relevant parts myself from the Swedish original) as it is a paraphrase of the last two paragraphs (or acomplete rip-off, if you will). It is my favourite short story of all time, and when I re-read it last night it… just spoke of MorMor to me.


	6. Mormor

“Bleed for me, my darling,” he says and the war is over. 

I don’t remember when it started. Memories get fuzzy and far away, you know. They slide, slink, slither away. Too many bombs, too many bars. But I remember this; his nails digging into my neck, bruising; the taste of fading tobacco; and a laugh that jangles with unleashed demons. 

He says: “Pretty soldier boy, broken toy, why not let Daddy put you back together?” 

It never makes sense, the things he says to me. The things he does. I wake up one morning with a broken arm and three clumsy stitches. I wake up the next to the smell of flowers and breakfast in bed. 

I kill for him. Again and again. I lose count – never did that on the battlefield, but this is different. This is real. 

He says: “You are mine,” and I believe him.


	7. Mormor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. Seems I come home drunk a lot these days - so rambing drabble/poems it is!

There is a good tradition of love and hate.

“Oh, really,” you say. “ _Traditions_ , eh?”

No. Not really. Wherever he comes from, it’s a place of new habits; forgotten ones; ones of necessity and mindless routines.

You think: old money, and he speaks with the voice of a street rat from Blackpool. You think: bit and kicked and fought his way up from the gutters, and he strikes back with a casual reference to the uncle of the grandfather of the youngest son –

It can easily be faked, of course. What can’t?

Still. Every Christmas a body in a church, every Midsummer Eve a virgin in a slimy pond.

You aren’t _superstitious_ , are you, Jim?

No. No, no. Never that. Right… ?

There is a good tradition of love and hate. And you fucking _hate_ traditions.


	8. Mormor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by Eagle-Eye Cherry's song "Are You Still Having Fun?".

_Are you still having fun?_

You come home with a smile to cut my throat and when I ask you how you’ve been you just chuckle

(I wake up in the middle of the night to find you gone. I find you, five minutes later, curled up on the far side of the couch in the sitting room, and who the fuck could ever figure you, boss?)

_Are you still having fun?_

It is raining, and you’ve spent the past five hour staring out that the steady stream of God’s tears falling down from the sky. “What are you looking at?” I ask, and you shrug: “Nothing.”

_Are you still having fun?_

You… don’t answer. You’ve gone silent, boss. You don’t talk to me anymore. “Boss,” I demand, arms crossed over my chest and eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is going on?”

You don’t answer. (Git.)

_Are you still having fun?_

…

Rain again. It was sunny this afternoon. Not anymore. The blood mixes with the dirty water on the roof and I guess you’ve finally answered my question.


	9. Mormor

Sometimes Jim leaves him to starve in a locked room for two days straight. Then there is a banquet table with steak and taters and apples and baked beans and sauce. 

Jim says: “Still,” and Sebastian keeps his hands at his sides and his mouth closed. 

Sometimes Jim will feed him Viagra and a steady stream of hardcore porn for two days straight. Then Sebastian stumbles into the bedroom to find the consulting criminal decked out in a lace corset and stockings and high heels, spread on the bed like a king’s feast. 

Jim says: “Heel,” and Sebastian remains in the doorway, jaw clenched and muscles frozen. 

~~Sometimes –~~

_One time_ Jim fakes his own death and leaves the sniper to mourn for two years straight. Then he appears in the rundown flat’s doorway with a three-day stubble and a casual grin on his gaunt face. 

Jim says: “Easy Tiger,” and Sebastian smashes him against the wall, punches and kisses him until they are both breathless and bleeding.


	10. Mormor

My first thought was, he lied in every word.

My second thought was, screw Browning.

My third thought I’m still waiting for. He took them all, you see. Wormed his way under my skin, ripped my tongue out with teeth as sharp as shrapnel.

I spoke with his voice, I killed in his name. Years and years and the blood runs ever red. Stained streets, stained sheets. I became the shadow of a dream of a whisper. (Moriarty.)

Now he’s gone and my sheets are clean and I’ll be forever waiting for that third thought.


	11. Mormor

So sometimes there is this –

Sebastian comes home, and he’s angry, angry, angry, because things have gone wrong/he missed his shot/people are fucking stupid. Jim is sprawled on the couch, looking dapper as fuck and twice as bored.

What happens next won’t be pretty or sweet. It’ll be painful and bloody and more power than play. It’ll be just what they need, and when everything else fades the bruises will still remain.


	12. Sheriarty

The world has ended and there are no gates.

Sherlock is standing on the edge of forever, and Heaven is spread out before him, wide open and welcoming. He can see them all it the distance; John, Greg and Molly, his parents and even Mycroft… All the old wounds are healed, and all the past hurt forgotten. A new start. Life everlasting.

And still he hesitates, there on the brink of salvation.

“Not a believer in happy ever after? I know just how you feel, dear.” Jim Moriarty’s voice is a half-bored, half-amused drawl before it suddenly turns to steel: “You promised me a handshake in hell, Sherlock. Not trying to renegade on your promise, are you?”

Sherlock doesn’t turn to look at him. “There is no hell. As it turns out.”

“Bit of a let-down, that. I had plans.”

“King of hell?”

“Well, I do look good in a crown.” A beat. “There’s no hell. That doesn’t mean that this is the only option.”

Sherlock glances over his shoulder, looking past Jim at the gray-not-gray that seems to stretch out forever. “Emptiness. Nothingness.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” The detective can hear the glint of teeth in Jim’s voice. “It’s the path Lucifer chose. To forge his own way. To find a world beyond that which was created for him.”

Sherlock’s eyes stray back to the familiar figures in the distance. There’ll be peace in the light. John has been waiting for him there for almost two decades, his parents far longer than that –

“You lived for them.” Jim’s voice is casual and mocking and disinterested and desperate. “Your death was always mine, Sherlock.”

They are waiting for him –

But to the east an unknown gray and a world waiting to be shaped and the other’s hand on his shoulders. “I lived for them,” Sherlock quietly agrees, with a silent farewell and a plea of forgiveness slowly turning away from the shimmering light to finally face Jim. “But I don’t live anymore.”

And Jim’s smile, for a moment, seems to burn brighter than all the fires of Heaven.


	13. Mormor

Jim burns like the sun.

Sebastian has been to the Erg Chebbi; has been to the Bayuda desert; to the Empty Quarter. He knows the thirst of two days without fresh water, he knows how to dismiss the wishful dreams of a green oasis. But now there is Jim -

“Can you tell me the difference between an exploding sun and a breaking heart?”

“No.”

A pout, or the pretense of one: “You’re not even trying.”

“No.”

There is blood then; in the morning there will be bruises aplenty and no apologies.

Jim burns like the sun. As for Sebastian… he doesn’t need any fairy tales. He took astrophysics, and he knows that no suns burn forever and that every black hole was once a brilliant star.


	14. Mormor

He grows old and it seems like an insult.

He spends years trying to bring the Holmes brothers down, all the while torn between ‘for Jim, because this is what he would have wanted’ and ‘ _fuck_ Jim, Jim’s _dead_ , who the hell _cares_ about what he’d have wanted’. 

He keeps trying to get himself killed, but keeps failing. Too good at what he does, and suicide was never his style. 

Mycroft Holmes dies at 54. Tumor in the brain. There’s irony to be found there, he thinks, irony or poetic justice. But he has long since ceased to care about such shit. 

Everybody dies. Some too soon, some too late. 

Not Sherlock Holmes, though. Not the grand detective. He turned on the telly the other day, just wanted some sodding distraction while he swallowed down another take away meal, and he should have known better, but. And there he was, Holmes, well past sixty and still going strong, nattering on about some smuggler’s ring, Polish mafia, Cardiff. The good doctor was standing next to him, hair white as snow and still with that star struck look on his face. 

Jim’s been gone for a very long time. The world has moved on. That, more than anything else, is fucking _intolerable_. How the fuck can it be, that he’s still here, and Jim is gone, and the world moves on, like none of it ever mattered, like Jim never even existed - 

The curry ends up splashed against a wall. Nothing feels better and he goes to bed with an empty stomach, and an aching… something else. 

“Oh, it is you again,” Sherlock Holmes says. “It’s been a while.” There’s a disdainful grin on his face, like this is all he’s been waiting for, like he knew this was coming. All an act, a façade, and even if it’s not, it’s too late now. The clever detective, always wanting everything else to be as clever. Jim had told him that, a lifetime ago. _Sorry, Mr. Holmes, but I’m not quite as clever as that._

The bombs are all planted. London, Beijing, New York, Kairo, Mumbai, _everywhere_. It hadn’t even been that hard, all things considered. When there is no discernable motive, the action becomes hard to predict or track. 

He could have done it anytime. Everyone has their breaking point. 

“Well?” Holmes asks, gesturing to the empty room. Watson is silent behind him, but his eyes are ever alert, his hand discreetly tucked into his pocket. “Why are we here?” 

He doesn’t answer. He just pushes the button, and it ends. 

Tonight the world blows up and tomorrow Jim’s face will be all over the screens, all over the world, an old recording brought back to life. Nothing will ever be the same, and this time the world won’t forget.


	15. Mormor

And it’s the first morning after and Sebastian wakes up to itches and aches and a strange sort of gleeful triumph.

“Morning,” he says, and bites back a yelp as Jim backhands him. 

So much for pillow talk.

“The Olsen brothers need seeing to,” Jim says. “Sort it.” He is sitting up in the bed, looking bored and entirely unaware of his second-in-command’s naked body right next to him. Unaware of the fact that Sebastian could kill him in two seconds flat; unaware, or unconcerned. “I need the schematics for the Newcastle hit on my desk by noon.” 

The sniper grits his teeth. ”Yes, _sir._ ” 

Jim’s smile holds no warmth. “Good boy.” 

But… all the dismissive remarks in the world can’t explain the bruises on the consulting criminal’s neck, and no amount of haughty condensation can disguise the slight limp the other walks with.

Sebastian smiles, stinging cheek and all. There’ll be other times and other mornings, and he can tell that their dance has just begun.


	16. Mormor

But then there are days when Jim won’t listen -

Not to ‘boss’, not to ‘James’, not to the ever-detested ‘kitten’.

He’s far away gone, is Sebastian’s man, and what’s left is an empty shell of a man; quiet; withdrawn.

The sniper will reason at first, will eventually plead: get it the fuck together, boss, can’t you bloody well _hear_ me?

Jim can’t; he won’t, and the sniper is left with his impotent rage.

There’ll be times - once the begging is done and the pleas go unheard – when Sebastian snaps. Slap, punch, kick, and they’ll both wake up to bruises and the remnants of rage they can’t remember.

They’ll pretend, then; that nothing’s amiss, and it’s all of this world, and there’s nowhere Jim will go where Sebastian cannot follow.

It’s a lie, but it’s a good one, and they’ll keep repeating it until the rain mixes with blood on a rooftop in the cold July dusk.


	17. Mormor

So this is the way it is, yeah?

November. Far too many sleepless nights, far too little sunlight. Jim is off to Prague and Berlin and Rome. You wake up to an empty bed.

_You’ve dialed a number that cannot be reached from your calling area. Please try again._

This is London and winter does not happen. No snow, no reflected starlight. Dark, dark; dark the days until spring awakens. Saplings, buds, the green of morning; you are a shadow and liar and death. So many lives slipping through your fingers – one would think you’d care not to hold them at all.

In the desert the wild thorn blooms. ( _What?_ )

 “Miss me, Tiger?” It’s been three months and winter is a memory; summer, long since lost.

And this is the way it is, this is the way it goes, now and forever: backhand, his blood red against the white walls, sharp teeth, smile, you roar, time folds back. November again, dark.


	18. Mormor

Never: I love you.

February is gray and cold and lasts forever in spite of being the shortest month. You bring him tea and blankets and don’t flinch when he scoffs at your efforts.

In June the air conditioning breaks down.

November comes with the sassy twirl of a detective’s scarf and all the opportunities in the world. ‘Don’t get lost,’ you say, and he grins.

You hate that grin. Not for you; not of this world.

The days grow shorter and his smile more absent. ‘You want me to pack anything extra for the meeting tonight?’ – ‘No. No… Magnussen is small fry.’

You almost die that night. You’re not sure he notices.

‘Christmas in Antwerpen,’ he says. ‘Snow-capped mountains. Fir trees and a warm fire. Did you pack your winter coat, dear? I hear it’s lonely at the top.’

He bleeds. Like any man, and you shouldn’t be surprised, but yeah. Punch him in the face and he bleeds. Punch him in the gut and he falls over. Kick and rage and scream; he’ll drop.

(He’ll get up again, spitting, snarling. Eyes cold, revenge so sweet on his tongue he can’t wait to taste it. No time for death now,  no time to waste.)

Never: I love you. But sometimes, unspoken: I need you.


	19. Mormor

They don’t celebrate birthdays. What kind of stupid crap is that anyway, yeah?

 _Of course_ Jim knows when Sebastian’s birthday is, just like he knows the sniper’s shoe size, knows his favorite red curry dish at the local Thai restaurant, knows how to make him come in under two minutes.

“How old are you anyway?”

Jim grins, white teeth glinting.

“Twenty-fifth of July,” Sebastian decides. “Thirty-five years ago, that’s when.”

And Jim scoffs, and he rolls his eyes, and the years come and go. They do not talk of birthdays again, but every year there is a suit, there is a bomb, there is a baby’s head on a stick, and they grow older still.

“Happy birthday, boss.”

Jim does not reply, but Sebastian grins. Another year, and they’re not dead. That’s a win, yeah?

Yeah.


	20. Mormor

Three times he lied to me:

1\. “And I can walk away anytime I want?”

“Of course you can. Tiger.”

2\. “Will it hurt?”

“Not a teensy little bit.”

3\. “I was thinking of ordering pizza. Will you be home tonight?”

“Sure. Get me a Quattro Stagioni. I’ll be back by six, I just need to stop by S:t Bart’s on the way home.”


	21. Johnlockiarty (of sorts)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just really have so many Johnlockiarty feelings following TAB. Also: TAB spoilers.

It’s so easy for John to accept that he’d just walk off an overdose, Sherlock notes, but absently, mind already racing ahead (to viruses and codes, videos, and the silent figures lurking in a dead man’s shadow). John’s always thought him invincible, thought the world of him (not just the nice bits of the world, mind you, but the dirty, dark bits as well). He’s always been the perfect audience. _My conductor of light._

The car turns left; Sherlock’s head snaps towards the front seat.

”Where are you going? This isn’t the way to Baker Street. We need to go back to Baker Street. Didn’t you hear me? Moriarty’s - ”

”Back. I heard you. Dead, but back. Which makes about as much sense as anything else that’s happened these past few weeks.”

”So - ”

”So we still have time to stop by Bart’s. I know you, Sherlock, I’ve seen you solve cases right up until your heart _stopped_ – litterally. You don’t just _walk off_ an OD, and you can’t fool me into thinking you can.”

 _More clever than he looks._ And always there to pull Sherlock back from the edge - when he lets him.

He’ll keep it from John - this John, real John (who won’t be fooled) - how part of him will forever yearn to take that leap (again). It’d destroy him, when he finally hits ground, but the glory of that final flight, the rush –

(Falling’s just like flying, except there’s a more _permanent_ destination.)

Sherlock closes his eyes, resigned to letting John choose their route, for now. They’ll reach Baker Street soon enough. He’ll have his rush, as the game beings anew -

(The game never ended.)

Somewhere, sometime, there’s a waterfall and three men. Different clothes, different hair, different times, but always the same three. The great Sherlock Holmes, and the men who make him.

One man to save him from being forced over the edge; and one man to make him go over anyway. Between the two of them, they’ll keep him falling, flying, for eternity.

He never touches ground; the story never ends; it is always 1895.


	22. Mormor

The world ends as it began, violently.

You are standing next to Jim, guns hot and bullets spewing. Can’t be arsed to give a fuck about the fire and death and destruction, about the final heavings of a long-since doomed world.

Eventually everything burns. You have always known this.

Now the world is aflame and all you want is to go before he does. All you’ve ever wanted is to not be there when the manic fires of eyes too dark to be true finally fades.

The end of the world goes on and on and still you stand. Stand and stand, until nothing remains but the soft corpse of someone never soft in life, still, at peace, finally, in your arms.

No matter what you’d given not to be here, you’d never leave him to face the final darkness alone.


	23. Mormor & Sheriarty

**A Lie I**

It's a brand new decade but the stores are all the same. Clothes and booze and food, and this would be boring, except in the past year you've learned the difference between champagne and cremant, and you start when you hear the name of 'Vivienne'.

”You look gorgeous in charcoal,” he says.

”At least the blood stains won't be obvious,” says you, and you shift and twist and still the suit feels too tight. Maybe it's just your imagination, because you're not used to taking orders, but this one is all lightning and no thunder, electric buzz, and all the fire of Hell's depths let loose.

You die for him in an alley and it's dirty and sad except you see him get into a car and away, so.

 

**A Lie II**

”You could be so much more.” The man is smiling much too confidently for someone this bruised, but you shrug it off; you've seen your fair share of madmen here in the pits. They come crooked; they leave shattered, or dead.

”I'd make it worth your while,” he calls after you in a singsong and for a moment you are inexplicably torn. There's a promise in that voice and you -

You shake your head, and walk on.

 

**A Lie III**

Mycroft Holmes is dead. If anybody notices, nobody mourns.

”We are grateful for your services to the kingdom,” the King says, and Jim bows his head. You can't properly see from this far away and up in the galley, but you imagine the smile on his face to be beatific, sincere.

”Twisted little cunt,” someone mutters to your left. ”Leave him to it and it won't be half a year until World War III.”

You smile, because fuck yeah, they're right.

 

**A Lie IV**

”But I'm not my brother. I'm _you_ ,” and this is where you lose him. You won't know it for years yet, and by the time you catch on it's already much too late.

You'll follow him through the night then, gun in your hand, but you'll see the look on his face as the detective takes him into his arms, and you never knew you could love someone enough to walk away.

 

**A Lie V**

”I doesn't matter, Sebastian; all that matters is that we're together.” Jim's voice is soft, and this, this can't be real, Jim was never soft, but there's the smell of him, greedy fingers through your hair, and you can feel his chapped lips against yours and surrender was never this easy, and yet.

 

**Life**

It ends.

 


	24. Mormor

“Oh, Tiger, but I’ve missed you.”

Almost enough to make him break off his assault, bow down and grovel, but Jim’s voice is much too smug and Sebastian never liked getting down on his knees anyway. “I’m going to fucking end you,” he says, and Jim laughs and the sound is everything the last two years hasn’t been; life, and glory, and fun.

A trick, Sebastian had thought, seeing the video on every screen just a month ago; a clever trick, he’d thought last night, when the leaked footage of a covert beach encounter flickered to life on his phone. But now Jim is here, flesh and bone, life and mirth, grinning up at him from under the chokehold like the world didn’t end in June 2012.

“I’ll end you,” Sebastian repeats, but, though turning darker, twisted, Jim’s grin never falters: “You should have killed me years ago, sweetheart. We’re way past that now.”

And there’s cold fingers against his throat, and (impossibly) sharp teeth at his neck, and whatever the world was without Jim, it fades and disappears and becomes nothing.

“Let’s start again,” Jim says, and Sebastian can’t remember what the word for not-yes is supposed to be.


	25. Moriadlock

Sherlock always tells the truth; Jim lies for the sheer fun of it; Irene watches and shakes her head. It’s amusing, she thinks, the little games they play. (And far away and in the shadows, John and Sebastian washes their hands of the whole thing, but they can’t quit, not quite. Nothing like the rush of a madly arrogant genius.)

Sherlock never quite gets used to it, the way they’re both always up before him. He doesn’t sleep much, and yet he can still count on one hand the times he’s woken up to the two of them still tangled in half an embrace. More often than not, he’ll wake up to cold sheets and the sounds of a low-key, never serious, snarky argument in the kitchen.

They bring him coffee, and never complain about him not drinking it.

”So… you’re happy then,” John says, and it is June and they’re alone in the flat, for once. It is a statement, but really it’s a question and Sherlock replies:: ”Yes.”

He always tells the truth (nearly), and John knows it. The doctor gives a slight nod of his head, too good of a friend to object: ”All right.” A pause. ”Adler’s not too bad, I suppose. Better watch it with Moriarty, though.” Too good a friend to leave that unspoken. Too good a friend; the very best.

Sherlock relaxes, releasing tension he hadn’t known he was holding. ”Thank you.”

And maybe he’ll never get used to the way they’re always up before him, but there is John waiting with his tea when he finally wakes, in the evenings there is Jim and Irene, and they way they fit together like a puzzle he never knew he was trying to solve.


	26. Jim (Moriadler & Sheriarty & Mormor)

Imagine Jim - 

\- as he wakes up in the middle of the night to his phone buzzing, sleep snatched away and dreams forgotten; frowning as Irene laughs at his bark. Two minutes, and he'll be frowning still as she hangs up the phone, but there'll be a smile lurking in the corner of his lips as he sends the text to facilitate her latest scheme.

She never tells him 'thank you' and the read roses sent to a safe house she shouldn't know about are unbearably cheesy but _whatever_.

He wonders if she's clever enough to destroy him, and if he's bored enough to let her.

 

Imagine Jim -

\- as he smiles behind a glass of milk, parents hushed and worried while the radio droons on about talented young swimmer Carl Powers, such promise, what a blow to the village, his poor mum's beside herself.

It'll be another year, two, until he learns of another enterprising youth, and the inquiries one boy called Sherlock Holmes has made. _This is how arch enemies begin_ , he'll think then; young yet, and fanciful.

The thought of ”t _his is how lovers begin”_ is still a decade away.

 

Imagine Jim -

 _-_ as he is flung to the side, body slamming into a brick wall, and his teeth clatter with the impact.

By the time he's gotten his breath back the gunfire's died down.

”What the hell do you think you're doing?” he hisses, eyes black as he rounds on the bloody giant of a man who had the fucking audacity to _touch_ him, _shove_ him.

”Saving your life,” the man – something Moran? - says coolly. Doesn't back down, doesn't bow low.

”It wasn't your life to save.” Jim's eyes are black; their promise the death denied him.

Moran doesn't blink: “It is now.”

 

Imagine Jim -

\- as Molly hands him a cup of tea, as the woman who'll be known as Mary Morstan accepts his paymen with a slight nod of her head, as Mycroft Holmes' lips twist in disgust, as -

 

Imagine Jim - 


	27. Molliarty

Okay, but imagine when Molly decides that she wants to bang Moriarty:

Sherlock and Jim’s been… _seeing each other_ , or whatever the hell you want to call it, for a while now. (No one’s thrilled about it, but what can you do?) (Mycroft, incidentally, tried to have Jim discreetly removed. It… didn’t work out.) And it’s all going about as well as can be expected, when on one fine morning, Jim Moriarty finds himself cornered by Molly Hooper

Maybe she just happens to be pass by as he exits Baker Street and decides to seize the moment, but more likely she’s been lying in wait, maybe for hours, all the while debating whether or not to just walk away and forget all about it - 

Anyway, Jim makes to move past her without a second glance (because he is a bastard, let’s never pretend he is not), but she blocks his path and fucking mobsters daren’t do that, so he stops. Smiles, all teeth. Says something threateningly pleasant, probably mentioning how Sherlock’s _indisposed_ , you can imagine it.

And Molly, with her big scarf and ponytail and broken sentences, she just ignores his little barbs and meaningful smile, and clutches her bag real tight. ”When you were Jim from IT, we were… together.”

”I _remember_.”

And you can call her a mouse (if you’re an idiot) but you can’t ever call her a coward, so she ignores that smile and all his teeth too. ”You were gentle. Sweet. But that’s not who you are, is it? It was just a… mask. A game. It’s not who you are with Sherlock.”

”Sherlock and I don’t really fuck much,” he says, and she does flinch a little at the word ‘fuck’, _oh that’s adorable_ , but she doesn’t back down.

Core of steel, our Ms. Hooper. And _used_ to standing up to arrogant genius, these days.

”I don’t care,” she says. ”What you and Sherlock… I don’t. I know he’s not… ” She pauses, bites her lip. Doesn’t look away. ”But you are. And I want to… have you. As you are now. When you’re yourself.” The hesitancy has gone from her voice, now; forced out. Her eyes meets his and do not falter. ”You owe me that.”

And this is where Jim laughs, I think, because the fuck he cares about _owe_ , but it’s not often that people manages to surprise him. He laughs, and he says: ”All right.”


	28. Seblock (past Sheriarty & Mormor)

_Burn, baby; bright._

They meet in bars, the seedy kind Jim would have turned his nose up at.

”I could end you,” Sebastian says.

”You’re an overconfident, under-employed idiot with remarkable lack of self-preservation,” Sherlock says.

They fuck in flea-ridden beds, against minibars long since broken, and they both wish the other was somebody else. They fall asleep next to each other and dream of dark eyes and laughter tinged with madness and glee.

”I should kill you,” Sebastian says.

”He’d never forgive you,” Sherlock replies, on his back and smoking, unseeing eyes trained at the ceiling; unconcerned.

”He’s _dead_. Who the fuck cares what he would or wouldn’t do?” Sebastian doesn’t smoke. The bottle of vodka next to the bed is nearly empty.

Sherlock doesn’t answer. He puts out his cigarette and leaves. Sebastian finishes his drink and vows never to return, again.

Jim’s ghost is silent, if it is there at all.


	29. Molliarty (minor Mormor & Sheriarty)

His touch is soft but he’s been Jim from IT forever and she isn’t fooled.

He laughs when she tells him to cut it out but then she slaps him, _hard_ , and _oh_ , he wasn’t expecting that.

The smile is almost enough to cover his surprise.

She’s not Sherlock – no virgin – and she’s no desire to be. People will think what they will, what of it, and she’ll be here, in his arms, on top, and never backing down again.

”Vixen,” he says.

”Just Molly,” she corrects.

Neither of them wrong. Neither nearly right.

—

Monday is saving lives, and Tuesday is counting them, and Wednesday is Jim, and Thursday is Jim, and Friday is private, and Saturday is Jim, and come Sunday she’s alone and still Molly.

—

The way he feels when he falls asleep is too soft, dark lashes against pale white, and she’d love him soft in life, _except._

His teeth are sharp, and the marks he leaves lasts for much too long. When he grabs her wrist, shoulder, waist, she gasps, because his grips is brusing, yet just enough, yet just barely.

”We’re both chasing ghosts,” he tells her, and g _ood Lord_ she doesn’t groan; she’s well over Sherlock by now, and isn’t it time he moved on as well?

_—_

They both ask her to save them. She takes a look at their fevered faces, and chooses herself.

—

”He never stays,” Sebastian tells her, and she’d roll her eyes, were it not for the look of naked longing in his eyes. There’s something else there too, a hint of forever, like the other man knows  for a fact that when the final trumpet calls, it’ll be him and Jim, back to back, teeth bared, and no one else until it all fades into nothing.

”I don’t expect him to stay,” she says, and it is the truth. No regret in her voice; she wants him, at times, but she doesn’t need him. Let him be Sebastian’s ever after and Sherlock’s eternal foe, the dark mirror; she’ll take the warmth of his arms as he settles down around her, his clever mouth silent as his clever tongue flickers over her clit, glimpses of humor dark enough to rival her own, the way his hair looks like a half-arsed bird’s nest in the morning, before he steps into the shower and steps out Moriarty.

She never asks him which persona is more real. All of them, and none, she suspects, but she long since reconciled herself to the fact that she doesn’t care.

—

Once alone again, though with the faint smell of someone else still clinging to her skin, Molly absent-mindedly pets Toby as she waits for the kettle to boil. Her thoughts are already turning from ever-shifting eyes and quick hands to corpses and lab reports and needing to pick up milk on the way home from work.

Outside, the city is still almost asleep. A thin layer of fresh snow on pavements and cars adds a hestitant light to the gray January dawn.

Somewhere, there’s a man who’ll return to her when he wants to be just Jim again. For now, there is quiet.


End file.
